


4 Ways Wash and Carolina Put Maine to Rest

by QueSeraAwesome



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Closure, Coma, Euthanasia, Grief, Grief/Mourning, Medical Trauma, Moving On, Spoilers for the season twelve finale, not the happy ending you want, you could read implied Wash/Maine or Mainelina if you wanted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-02-22 21:20:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2522183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueSeraAwesome/pseuds/QueSeraAwesome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>....and one way they found a way to take him with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They find him, deep in the Chairman’s ship. After the battle is over, in the middle of a search for information. In a box. In the cold.

The body of Agent Maine lies in storage, in a morgue.

“He looks the same,” Wash says as they stare down at the lifeless body.

He doesn’t. His cheeks, always prominent, are sunken. There are deep circles under his eyes. (There are deep circles under all of their eyes now. Like the fatigue of their lives has made its mark on their faces in the form of near-permanent exhaustion-bruise.) (Maybe the circles aren’t permanent. Maybe they just need rest. Maybe they just need to slow down. Maybe they’ll never know). There are deep frown-furrows carved into his forehead. He is paler than either of them have ever seen him. 

“He does,” Carolina agrees.

He is dead. Agent Maine is dead.

He is naked, covered with a sheet. A strange courtesy, considering everything else Hargrove has done. But then, people tend to be a bit weird about those kinds of things. It’s strange the conventions people keep, even as they advocate the murder of millions without a backwards glance.

“What could Hargrove possibly have wanted with his body?” Wash asks. “His armor, I get, especially considering that trophy room. But his body?”

“Trophy. Dissection. More experiments, tests,” Carolina says. “I don’t really want to know.”

She reaches up slowly, the hiss filling the quiet of the room as she de-seals her helmet and pulls it off. She drops it lightly to the floor. Wash wonders if he should join her, fingers twitching with the impulse to reach for this own helmet seals. He pauses. Decides against it. His nerves are too raw, too oversensitive right now to be so vulnerable.

Carolina’s eyes are open and aching on Maine’s face, taking him in. She leans heavily on the table, elbows locked, half bent.

“I thought he’d just gone over the cliff,” Wash whispers. Carolina stiffens at his words. “I thought he’d gotten dragged under the water, the ice. If I’d known—“

“You wouldn’t have left him here like this, Wash,” Carolina says.

Her eyes don’t leave Maine’s face. This is the first time she’s seen him since the cliff, Wash realizes. Since her cliff.

“Neither of us would have.”

Wash nods, bows his head. They stand together in silence, each at one of Maine’s sides. They, the survivors. They, the closest to him. And he, the fallen. He, their friend. It feels like almost like a vigil. Like a prayer.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” Carolina says. “Locked away in a drawer. He deserves a burial. He deserves—"

“We’ll give him that,” Wash says. “We can do that now. We have time.”

Carolina nods, finally breaks her gaze, turning her head away from him. Wash doesn’t know if he should acknowledge the moisture reflecting in her eyes or not. Doesn’t know if he should acknowledge the threatening sting in his own.

A burial for Maine, he thinks. A putting-to-rest. It’s a good idea. It’s better than what the others got.

“I told you…” Wash starts. “Did I tell you I… It was me. For York. And the twins. Did I tell you?”

“No,” Carolina replies. “But I knew. And I saw the scorch marks on the island.”

Wash nods, hands tightening on the sides of the metal table.

“Right.”

Carolina sighs a soundless sigh, closes her eyes. Her head hangs on her neck. She is the picture of exhaustion, of the circles under both their eyes right now. Right now, they are both so tired. Wash thinks of explosions, of armor pieces flying through the air. His stomach churns.

“I didn’t really have a choice, then,” Wash says. “I was supposed to destroy the equipment, the armor. I—“

“You did what you could, Wash,” Carolina says. She doesn’t open her eyes.

“We can do better for him,” Wash says, almost desperately. “We will.”

“We will,” Carolina agrees, standing straight and finally, finally opening her yes.

Carolina peels back the Kevlar, extricates her hand from her glove. Wash watches, wide-eyed, as she reaches forward, cups the jut of Maine’s jaw in her palm. Strokes her thumb across one sharp cheekbone. There is no hesitation in the press of her living, breathing hand to his lifeless skin. She doesn’t pull away, as the seconds tick on.

“I don’t want to burn him.” Carolina says, voice choked. “I don’t want—“

“No,” Wash agrees, thinking of the last time he saw Maine’s body surrounded by flames. “No. Not like that.”

“A burial,” Carolina says, voice solidifying back to her usual tone. “Unmarked. So no one can come back for him.”

“Somewhere they won’t find him,” Wash agrees. Blinks rapidly.

“Even us,” Carolina says, letting her hand fall back to her side. “We put him to rest.”

Wash nods.

“And we let him go.”


	2. Chapter 2

2.

They find Hargrove in a room that’s marked “trophy room” on the map Epsilon dug up. That’s not all they find.

“ _Where is he?_ ”

Her gloves are digging into Hargrove’s throat, the old man’s face gone red and blotchy with lack of oxygen. His feet don’t touch the ground, thrown against the wall, the crown of his head level with where Maine’s helmet is displayed against the wall.

“You can’t do this,” Hargrove chokes between his teeth, clutching at the tatters of his authority. He struggles futilely in her grip, seventy a year old man against an angry armored marine.

“I think she can,” Wash says dryly. “I think she is.”

“Where is he, you son of a bitch,” Carolina snarls. “ _Talk._ ”

Hargrove snarls, sets his jaw in defiance. Carolina slams him against the wall again, shaking him by the shoulders until his head cracks back against the wall.

“What did you do with him?!”

“Who?” Hargrove yelps, trying to reach for his now-aching head.

Carolina’s grip doesn’t allow him to, forearms like iron and pinning his thin biceps to the wall.

“Agent Maine,” Carolina snarls. “Where is he?”

“I do not understand—“

“You’ve got his helmet,” Carolina hisses between her teeth. “Wash told me what happened to him, the cliff. You had to have recovered him to get it. So where. Is. Agent. Maine’s. Body.”

“What would I want with a dead man’s body?” Hargrove demands. “The recovery teams were only required to recover the assets, the equipment. I don’t know what they did with the remains—“

“Remains—“ Wash gapes.

“So what you’re trying to tell me,” Carolina hisses. “Is that you fished him out of the ice. Took his armor. Took his helmet. And then _left him there_?”

Hargrove eyes widen. His eyes flicker, almost pleadingly to Wash. There’s no help for him there, Wash’s gaze cold and dispassionate as the visor he looks though..

“You left him,” Carolina continues. “Naked. In the cold, in the snow. Alone.”

She drops him, takes a step back, shaking her head.

“I’d ask you what kind of monster would do that kind of thing, but I know,” Carolina says. “The kind of monster that would try to decimate a planet for their own gain. The kind of monster that calculates casualties and losses in the field on as consequences on his paycheck.”

Carolina pulls back her fist.

"The kind of monster that has to be put down."

"No, wait!—"

Carolina’s fist snaps forward. With a crack of impact, the Chairman bounces off the wall behind him, crumples.

“Did you kill him?” Wash asks, tone flat.

“I don’t know,” Carolina replies, unclenching her fist. “Tried to hold back. I want to see him answer for what he’s done. But no promises.”

Neither of them stoop to check. Carolina steps back from the wall, from Hargrove’s slumped body. There’s a bruise already forming across the left side of his face. Like gravity, they both turn towards the helmet mounted on the wall. And it’s silent. It’s mounted in a space of honor, right in the center of the room. There are small LED lights set around the base of the stand, illuminating it in the gloom of the room. It is covered in deep scratches, in weathered grooves. It shines. It’s been polished.

It’s empty.

“He didn’t like being out of his armor,” Carolina hisses through clenched teeth. Her head falls, the curve of her spine pulling in on itself. Wash knows the cocktail of emotions betrayed by that curve: frustration, misery, grief, shame. He’s seen it often enough. “He never did.”

"I used to sneak him his helmet early when he ended up in medical,” Wash says.

Carolina laughs, choked.

“I did too.”

They pretend that they aren’t thinking of the body of their friend, left stripped and defenseless in the cold. Untended to. They don’t think of him lying on some slab of ice, forgotten. Sinking beneath an arctic lake. They don’t think about how much Maine hated to swim. They don’t think about his dog tags. They don’t wonder where they are, if they’re with him. They don’t wonder if there is anything but the Metastability symbol tattoo on the back of his head to identify who he was anymore. They don’t wonder what he would have wanted. What name he would have wanted on his headstone. It’s not like either one of them would have known the name he was born with anyway.

Carolina remembers suddenly, vividly, that he had a DNR order put into his medical files, after Spiral.

“It wasn’t him,” Wash says. “At the end. It wasn’t the Meta either, something different. But it wasn’t him.”

Carolina doesn’t look at him. Wash watches as her shoulders rise and fall with her breath.

“Maine died a long time ago,” Wash says.

“Yeah,” Carolina says, straightening.

She checks the Chairman for a pulse, grabs him by the collar, starts dragging him towards the door.

“And we have a job to do.” 

 

3.

They expected Hargrove to spend more mercs after them. That’s why they’re camped out with sniper rifles around the back entrance of the camp. They _expected_ that.

They didn’t expect this. Fishbowl gold helmet and white armor advancing towards them across the battlefield. Wash knows she’s seen it through her scope when the air rushes out of her, a long exhale of pain.

“It isn’t him,” Wash says.

“I know,” Carolina says. “He moves wrong.”

“It’s not him,” Wash says, the words tearing their way out of his lungs, ripping up his chest and throat as they come through. “ _It isn’t him_.”

“I k _now_ , Wash,” Carolina says. “He’s too short.”

“They altered the thigh-guards on the armor for the difference, look.”

“Maine wouldn’t hold a pistol like that.” “It’s the same armor,” Wash says, adjusting the zoom on the scope. “I’d know it anywhere. You— you’d know it anywhere. But it’s not him.”

“They stole his armor,” Carolina bites out. “Gave it to someone else.”

“Some bargain-bin _merc_.”

“At least it wasn’t Locus,” Carolina says.

Wash snorts, despite himself.

“Yeah,” he says. “At least there’s that.”

They fall silent, watch the mercs, the gleaming white in the center of the pack, advance towards their cover. Their breaths sync, slow. In, out. Heartbeats slowing.

“Headshot?” Carolina asks.

“Got one lined up,” Wash says. “You?”

“Yeah.”

The sit in silence, watching the mercs advance. They haven’t been spotted yet.

“On three,” Carolina whispers. “Sync?”

“Sync.”

One. Two. Three.

The merc goes down with two bullets in his skull, collapsing, body thrown backwards by the impact.

The surrounding mercs are taken out almost before they have time to react, five quick shots between the two of them before all enemies are down, the ground at the spot they stood splattered dark.

Wash sighs, puts down his gun, more shakily than he would admit to. It’ll be a few minutes before they send in another wave. If they send in another wave.

“It wasn’t him, Wash,” Carolina says.

“I know,” Wash says tiredly. “But for a moment, I thought….”

“…Yeah,” Carolina says. “Me too.”

Wash taps his fingers against his temples, like he’s forgotten he’s wearing his helmet.

“When you saw that helmet,” Wash asks quietly. “Were you afraid? Or…or did you...”

Carolina shakes her head. Doesn’t answer.

“Let’s go get that armor back,” she says. “Before anyone else gets a hold of it. I don’t want anyone else wearing it, ever again.”

“Sure, Boss,” Wash says, falling into step with her. “Right behind you.”


	3. Chapter 3

4. 

 

Church did say Charon Industries experimented with cryogenics a while back. 

They know why now.

There is a door off the trophy room, “Authorized Personnel Only.” After the ship is nothing but hiding stragglers, after the Chorus military has moved in on their heels, taking control of the ship, there is time to explore. A team of auditors and lawyers and computer scientists has moved in, assisted by FILSS in kicking over the dungheaps of Charon’s secrets and taking inventory of what lies beneath. No one stops Agents Washington and Carolina as they wander through the ship, side by side, not speaking, and no one stops them when they walk through the door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.”

There is a man in the room. His eyes are closed, behind the glass. His lips  have frost on them.

They know his face.

Then come the doctors. Then come the scientists, the paperwork, and Carolina argues with white coats while Wash stands in front of the pod, eyes on Maine’s face, not moving. 

He doesn’t move when the yelling starts. He doesn’t flinch when Carolina slams a fist into the wall.

Dr. Bones fails to look impressed at the display. Kimball may trust this warrior woman and her temper, but she doesn’t have that luxury.  

“That can’t be all,” Carolina says. “There has to be something.”

“I wish there was, Agent,” Bones replies, her mouth a severe line. “I really wish there was. We simply don’t have the ability to bring back what isn’t there anymore. And that isn’t even considering the organ failure.”

“They wouldn’t have frozen him if there was a _chance_ —“

“They froze him because they were losing him,” Dr. Bones says, as gently as she has patience for. “They were losing their investment.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“That’s how they saw him,” Bones presses. “Look at these scans, look at the procedures they tried. They didn’t want the man. They wanted a tool.”

“ _Don’t call him that_.”

“Look at this!” Bones yells, waving a scan. “This is _before_ they cut into him! This is just from what whatever those Freelancer fucks did with their experimental neural implants, from taking on too many AI, from having them blown out of his brain without anything approaching safety measures! Do I need to tell you again how long it was before they managed to get him out of the coma? Do I need to read you again how long he’s been in a persistent vegetative state, or where he fell on the Glasgow Coma scale? Agent, I’m not telling you this to make you upset,” Bones says, throwing the papers down on the desk. “I’m telling you this so you can make the best choice for your friend.”

“I won’t just give up on him,” Carolina growls. “Not again.”

“There isn’t a man left to give up on.”

Carolina growls and takes a step toward her but Bones isn’t backing down. The women glare at each other, as if at any moment they will begin to circle each other. Kimball should be called, one scientist whispers to another. She’ll know what to do. 

“Everyone,” Wash says. The teams of white coats pause, look up. “Get out.”

The assorted scientists glance between the bristling anger of Agent Carolina and the frosty glare of Agent Washington. As one, they put down whatever it was they were working with and head for the door.

As they shuffle out, there is no sound but that of soles on tile, and the creak of Agent Carolina’s fists. 

Bones keeps Carolina’s gaze for a long moment before she turns away and follows the others out.

“If you turn it off,” Bones says, hand on the doorjamb. “If you turn it off, it’ll take a few minutes for him to warm up. And then he’ll go. There’s enough nerve damage, he shouldn’t feel any pain.”

The door shuts behind her. It rings in the silence.

“We have to turn it off.”

“Absolutely not,” Carolina snaps. “He’s here, Wash. He’s here, Sigma’s gone—“

“If there was any way I thought we could have him back, don’t you think I would?” Wash asks. 

“We can’t just let him—“

“We can,” Wash says. “He had a DNR, Carolina. After Spiral.”

“I know that!” Carolina snaps, turning away from him. “He took a bullet for me, took a clip to the throat and had a DNR put in his file after, you think I don’t remember that?”

“He made a choice to take that bullet for you,” Wash retorts. “And he made a choice with that DNR, we can’t take that from—”

“Don’t talk to me about taking things from him,” Carolina says, advancing on him. “You want to take away his second chance at—”

“At what, Carolina?” Wash says. “You heard the doctors. He isn’t coming back from this. Not this one.”

“You don’t know that,” Carolina says. She turns away from him, approaching the chryo pod.”People come back from comas, sometimes. We still don’t know why.”

“He’d come back as a tool,” Wash says, voice weary. “As somebody’s weapon. They way they always wanted him to be.”

“Not. Us,” Carolina forces out through gritted teeth. “We didn’t do this. We can fix it.”

Carolina presses her hand to the window of the pod. She imagines the cold is so clear she can feel it through the glove. 

He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping, like this. He looks like he’s already dead. 

She doesn’t remember when he started to slip away. Was it before Connie? After? Was he already gone then, Sigma lighting up his neural pathways instead? Was there anything left of him, the day the MOI crashed? Did he mourn her at all? 

They’ll never know the last moment he was truly Maine, where it was on the timeline he became more puppet than player. 

She doesn’t know what she’d say to him, if he were to open his eyes and see her, now. She’s been thinking about it for years and she’s never come up with an answer. 

It doesn’t matter. He’ll never be able to hear it. 

“You’re right,” Carolina whispers. 

But Wash doesn’t hear her, too caught up in the drone building between his eyes.

“He isn’t in there, Carolina,” Wash continues, voice rising in pitch as he goes along. “You weren’t _there_ , you didn’t _see_. You didn’t walk around all over the desert and back with it. There’s nothing in there but echoes of Sigma. Omega. And the others. There’s nothing left but pre-programmed impulses they wired in—”

“Wash?” Carolina says, turning. “Wash, hey—”

“—wasn’t any of him left. I looked and tried but he never. It was _so empty_.”

“Wash—”

Carolina turns and grabs him by the shoulders, holding him still. Wash’s visor tilts up to meet hers.

“You’re right,” Carolina repeats. 

Wash stares at her as his breath evens out and Carolina has the impression that behind his visor, his jaw has dropped. 

“We let him go,” Carolina says, voice refusing to shake. “We do it together.”

Wash stares at her for another long moment and Carolina begins to worry he’s changed his mind. Even with the right path sure in front of her, Carolina isn’t sure she could argue the necessity of what they need to do.

Wash nods.

“Just the three of us,” he says. “Just us.”

Together, they work out to shut down the machine. As soon as the power stops they pry open the door and lift him out, ease him to the floor.

They lay him down, head and shoulders pillowed across their knees. He’s so large, it takes both of them to do it. Carolina can’t decide if he looks larger or smaller than when she saw him last. If he feels larger or smaller than she remembers, like this. 

She reaches up and takes off her helmet, throws it aside. After a moment, fingers curling against his faceplate in indecision, Wash’s joins hers. Neither of them look up. Curled towards each other with their friend between them, bent in like parentheses, their eyes drink in his face. Wash is vaguely aware of the ends of Carolina’s hair draping over her shoulder, Carolina has a general impression of more frown lines, gray, and scars on top of the freckles than Wash has any right to have. But their eyes don’t meet. They can’t yet. Not now. 

Slowly, color returns to his fingers, his face. His eyelids don’t twitch. The frost melts from his lips, the moisture sliding down his jaw. Carolina wipes it away. 

It won’t be long now.

A drop falls onto Maine’s cheek, and Wash flinches for him. One of them must be crying, he realizes. He raises a hand to his face to see if it’s him, and meets a drop of moisture on its way down. Another tear falls on Maine’s face. Both of them must be crying. 

Carolina raises a hand and runs it over Maine’s scalp, feels the prickle of stubble. Maine would have hated that. Wash curls his palm around Maine’s elbow, holds on. 

The body stirs between them, and neither of them dare to breathe.

Maine breathes in once.

And stills. 

Wash doesn’t realize he hasn’t breathed until his lungs begin to burn. The exhale bursts, ragged in the quiet of the room. Carolina makes a small noise. Her hand, still rubbing at the stubble of Maine’s scalp, falls quiet.

They don’t even need to close his eyes. His eyes are already closed. 

Wash’s eyes are closed so he doesn’t see who moves first, all he knows is Carolina’s forehead presses into his own, their hair brushing as they curve together in their grief, bending in on themselves, into Maine, into each other. Her cheekbone bumps his forehead and their faces are damp. He reaches out and catches her free hand in his, a desperate clasp, a strange handshake over the body of their friend.

They curl up and breathe and press together for a long time.

Finally, she straightens, but only so far. Her bangs still brush his forehead, kissing at his hairline. 

“Do you think he knew we were here?” Wash asks, voice hoarse.

Carolina pets Maine’s hair one last time, then pulls her hand away. 

“I think if he knew we were here, we wouldn’t have had to do this,” Carolina says. 

Wash nods past the lump in his throat. 

 

5\. And One Way They Found TO Take Him With Them

 

The grave is done. 

(In some universes, they have nothing to put in it. In some, they fill the hole again, six feet down of dirt and more dirt. They always dig the grave anyway.)

It is done. Carolina pats the packed earth and turns to meet Wash in the shade. He quirks his mouth at her, almost a smile, almost, and hands her a water bottle. She takes it and sits beside him. 

His helmet sits by his hip and hers joins it. Side by side, they look at their work. A four-by-eight rectangle of disturbed earth. No headstone. They won’t be coming back, and they don’t want anyone else to either. There are those who would be interested in the bones of this man. No, Maine won’t be disturbed, not ever again. 

They’re super soldiers. Digging a grave is not so wearying a task that it can explain the heaviness in their bones. It can’t explain the way Carolina wipes sweat from her brow, or the tired curve of Washington’s spine. As if every shovel-full of dirt they moved weighed proportional to the man they buried. As if every shovel-full weighed as much as he meant to them. 

But it is sunny. There’s a breeze. Wash turns his face up into it and breathes deep, the smell of grass and dirt and life everywhere. 

“I don’t think he ever thought he’d get a grave,” Wash says, finally.

Carolina takes a long drink of water, glances at him from the corner of her eyes. Tries to remember the last time he looked this unguarded around her. 

“Nope,” she says. “I don’t think he did.”

We gave him this, Wash thinks. This, we could give him, thinks Carolina.

“Spartans never die,” she whispers. 

Wash’s head twitches in an aborted movement. He sighs, air blowing out of him, but he keeps his face tilted toward the sky, eyes closed. 

“He wasn’t a Spartan anymore,” he says. “They can’t touch him anymore.”

She can’t remember the last time she saw his face, before. Before the cliffs. Those kinds of things didn’t mean much to Maine, green meeting brown, not for a man who smiled with his hands, two fingers across his faceplate. For a man who smiled with his whole body. His armor was his skin, but his helmet was never his face. Maine never needed a face, not the way other people did. 

It was the other people who had trouble understanding that. Carolina’s big enough to admit she forgot it too, near the end of Freelancer. 

The faceplate of his helmet reflects patterns in the grass, a beam of sunlight hitting it at just the right angle. The pile of white armor next to them seems almost peaceful, its owner finally put to rest. 

As much as he’d have liked to be buried in it, as much as they’d have liked to do that for him, the armor has to be destroyed. They both know that. They couldn’t risk someone coming looking for it, using it. 

“He’s really gone,” Carolina says. “We let him go.”

Wash sighs into the sun, tilts his chin back towards earth.

“I don’t think grief is really like that,” he says, after a long pause. “Yeah, you let them go. You accept they’re gone. You move on. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t matter. It doesn’t mean you have to forget about them.”

“My family doesn’t do too great with memories,” Carolina says. 

“I don’t do too well with memories either,” Wash says, snark coloring his tone. “But…grief isn’t about forgetting. It’s about moving forward. ”

Carolina stares down at her boots, stretched out in front of her. Looks at the grave beyond. Agent Maine is dead, she thinks, and someday this won’t hurt so much. 

“Maybe you’re right.”

Maybe it isn’t the taking your lost one with you in your heart that’s the problem. Maybe it’s letting it stop you from walking forward. 

Carolina picks up her helmet, turns it towards her, visor up. 

“I never liked this helmet,” she says. She spins it in her hands, puts it back down. “It didn’t suit me. I just picked up what I could find.”

She turns and looks at him, really looks at him. Face to face. Green and grey. Neither look away. 

She looks at him and it occurs to Wash. She’s asking him for permission.

He nods.

She gets to her feet and steps forward, the tips of her boots just touching the disturbed earth of the grave. She bends and picks up Maine’s helmet, runs a hand over its curved surface. 

She hesitates, shoulders coming up, her whole body radiating uncertainty. As if she set foot in a church with bloody hands. 

She’s giving him the option to tell her no. To stop her. 

“Maybe we don’t have to leave him behind,” Wash says. “Maybe we can find a way to take him with us.”

“Are you sure?” she asks. “He was just as much yours as mine.”

Wash nods. 

Carolina takes a deep breath, and lowers the helmet on. 

The camouflage unit turns the little white on the helmet, under the faceplate, around the back, to aqua. Seafoam. Whatever. 

Carolina straightens and she’s herself again. A pillar of power, fists open and easy at her sides, spine lifting straight to the sky. 

She looks at him, turns the fishbowl faceplate toward him and he sees nothing but Carolina. Carolina, who loved their friend. And he knows she’s smiling. 

“You’re going to scare the shit out of the guys,” he says. He might even be looking forward to the screaming. 

“They’ll get used to it,” Carolina says. 

Wash thinks she’s probably right. The Reds and Blues have proven themselves to be capable of getting used to quite a lot. 

“Ready to get moving?” he asks. They still have to blow up the remains of the armor. There’s still things to settle with Chorus, with Charon, with the UNSC. There’s a whole future ahead of them, battles to fight, people to lecture, Reds and Blues to wrangle. 

Maine is dead. Maine is at rest. But a piece of Maine still stays saved in each of their hearts. They take him with them.

“Yeah,” Carolina says. “I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> QueSeraAwesome.tumblr.com


End file.
